Sacralizing Slaughter

We make frequent reference in this space to the fact that Islam is not just a religion, but also a totalitarian political ideology. The Koran, the hadith, and the sunna contain a complete template for the construction of tyranny, from the actions required of the ruler (khalifah) through Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) to the proper behavior of Allah’s subjects in the ummah. All forms of behavior are prescribed by Islamic doctrine — or proscribed, since “everything not explicitly forbidden is mandatory”^*.

From where you place your feet when you answer a call of nature to the proper method of making cheese — the Koran, the hadith, and the sunna have all the answers. And those answers include the circumstances under which people must be slaughtered, as well as the correct way for a believer to go about the task.

The grotesque and barbaric practices mandated by Islamic scripture remind us that there is no separation of the religious and the political within Islam. All the violent, cynical, and devious practices necessary for conquest and tyrannical rule are sanctioned and encouraged by Allah.

When Westerners think about religion, it is the peaceful and reverent hush of a church or synagogue that comes to mind. But for a devout Muslim, the sacred encompasses slavery, oppression, indiscriminate slaughter, and standing astride a bloody heap of corpses. The sacred practices of Islam — since their inception 1400 years ago and continuing uninterrupted into the 21st century — are drenched in gore.

With this in mind, consider the following excerpt from Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam by Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo (pp. 158-160).


Slitting the throat of enemies was also perceived as a ritual slaughter, a sacrifice offered up to Allah to propitiate him. When 8,000 Armenian Christians were killed by Ottoman Muslims in Urfa in December 1895 the young men were killed by the traditional ritual Islamic method for slaughtering animals. They were thrown on their backs, held by their hands and feet, and then their throats were slit while a prayer was recited.

Sometimes perpetrators and victims undergo ritual slaughter ceremonies to underline the religious motivation — perpetrators often participate in videoed ceremonies of dedication before going out on their missions. A recent example is the four-page Arabic document found in the luggage and cars of the perpetrators of the September 11th 2001 plane hijackings. Among other things it states:
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If God grants you a slaughter, you should perform it as an offering on behalf of your father and mother, for they are owed by you.

Passengers killed in the hijackings and plane crashes are viewed as ritual sacrifices provided by God to the hijackers.

Throat-slitting was widespread during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s, hundreds of innocent civilians — men, women and children — had their throats ritually slit by radicals of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) and other groups. journalists, teachers and schoolgirls were an especial target of such murders. Here is an example:

At 8.15 in the morning, six men holding hatchets, sawn-off shotguns and knives burst into the classroom at Oued Djer, a small village 50km south-west of Algiers. They seized fourteen-year-old Fatima Ghodbane and tore from her head the Islamic scarf she had only recently started wearing. As Fatima’s classmates watched, the men dragged her outside and bound her hands with wire. One of the guerrillas pulled her head back by the hair and stabbed her several times in the face. Then he slit her throat.

‘This is what happens to girls who go to university,’ the murderer then told Fatima’s classmates and teachers, shaking the knife, which was still covered in Fatima’s blood. ‘This is what happens to girls who talk to policemen. This is what happens to girls who don’t wear the hidjab [Islamic head-covering for women].

Before dumping Fatima’s body in front of the school gates, the killers carved the symbol of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) on her hand. Fatima’s death, in March 1995, is not an isolated case. According to the last recorded government figures, 101 teachers and 41 students of both sexes were killed in 1994 by Islamic extremists who attack schools because they are a symbol of the government.

The Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh had his throat slit on the streets of Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-born dual Moroccan-Dutch citizen, on 11 November 2004. Van Gogh had produced a film, Submission, which criticised the way Islam treated women. Following the release of the film he received many death threats from Muslims. In his trial, Bouyeri declared that “the law compels me to chop off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the prophet”.


* T.H. White, from The Once and Future King.